Abstract
A well-known syntactic difference between English and French concerns the distribution of adverbs with respect to finite main verbs. Whereas adverbs productively occur between a subject and the main verb in English (SAdvV order), this word order is generally ruled out in French. In the literature, the contrast between English and French has been analyzed as a difference with respect to verb movement. The aim of this paper is to examine how this contrast developed diachronically by comparing the distribution of adverbs and finite main verbs in the early histories of the two languages. This is of interest not only from a comparative point of view, but also because the two languages were in contact in medieval England. The paper explores to what extent the contact situation may have contributed to changes affecting the syntax of adverbs in Middle English. The evidence to be considered comes from two sources: a close comparison of a French text and its Middle English translation, and an overview of the status of adverb placement in a range of early French texts. The overall picture that emerges is that there is no strong evidence for influence of French on adverb placement in the history of English. However, the comparative diachronic analysis of the two languages reveals an interesting parallelism in their early developments.
Published Version
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